The EU unintentionally bolsters Hungarian authoritarianism

Eurocrats are pulling off a remarkable feat: they are making the Hungarian government more popular. I have blogged before about the autocratic proclivities of the Fidesz regime. Viktor Orbán, a free-market reformer during his 1998-2002 premiership, has recently become almost Poujadiste in his rhetoric. But the frenzied tone in which he is being attacked has the effect of elevating him above his critics. In the European Parliament just now, one MEP compared him to Castro, another to Stalin, a third accused him of persecuting intellectuals. Orbán remained unwontedly calm, courteous and conciliatory.

The thing is, the EU has picked the wrong battleground. You don't have to be on the Left to be alarmed by some of Orbán's reforms. His media laws have no place in a liberal democracy, and his changes to the electoral system are more than usually blatant in their partisanship.

Eurocrats, however, have no locus in such areas, since they fall wholly under national jurisdiction. So instead, wanting to give Orbán a kicking about something, they have concentrated his changes to the way in which public appointments are made, notably those to the board of the central bank. And here, they are fighting on the soggiest possible terrain.

One man's 'government control' is another's 'democratic accountability'. Why should Hungary, or any other country, be run by an unelected nomenklatura? I have campaigned for years for parliamentary oversight of state appointments in the UK.

As for the central bank, Hungary was where the European debt crisis began. Long before the Greek bailout, the previous prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, had had to go cap-in-hand to Brussels. The country is supposed to repay €5.9 billion to the EU and IMF this year, but is in no position to do so. Utter ruin lies ahead. So why do people want to keep the central bank, which played so large a role in creating this mess, invulnerable to public opinion? How could accountable governors possibly be any worse than the present ones?

Not that I want to pick on the Magyars. The Bank of England, the Fed and the ECB have all performed miserably over the past decade. Having repeatedly called for Parliament to reassumethe powers which it contracted out to the Monetary Policy Committee 15 years ago, I can hardly complain when Hungary moves in a similar direction.

Brussels officials, of course, see things differently. The idea that unelected functionaries might be subjected to parliamentary vetting fills them with unfeigned horror. After all, if powers shifted from apparatchiki to elected politicians, the entire EU system would collapse.

Still, the EU would carry more weight if it applied similar censure to Leftist and Europhile parties. The new Belgian government, for example, seems to me to be more or less openly violating its constitution in order to redraw its electoral map, but not a peep of complaint has been heard from the EU. And the very MEPs and Eurocrats who are howling about Hungary supported the actively suspension of multi-party democracy in Italy and Greece. Then again, of course, those civilian juntas have been installed in order to support the euro.

The sad thing is that, as I say, there really is a case to answer in Hungary. The 30-40 per cent of the political spectrum that, in every other country, is filled by a free market party of the Centre-Right, lies vacant. Only the successful former economics minister Lajos Bokros, an ECR ally whom I introducedto readers a while ago, speaks for mainstream conservatism.

Eventually, someone will break the duopoly of the two big parties and begin the process of economic recovery. Sadly, the EU's bullying is serving to defer that day.